


The House on the Cliff

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Destroy Ending (Mass Effect), Disability, F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:00:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: Shepard may have survived the war with the Reapers, but it came at a price.Having relocated to a house in California with Kaidan, she now has to manage the new difficulties of her life, including an unplanned pregnancy.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30





	The House on the Cliff

Shepard stares at the little blue cross on the pregnancy test. Then she checks the box. Then the stick. Then she opens an incognito search engine on her omni tool and checks the test’s website.

Pregnant.

She starts to throw the test in the trash, then stops. Kaidan might see it.

She wraps the test in toilet paper and shoves it into her pocket. She’d chuck it in the ocean later. There are too many reporters happy to dig through their trash right now to risk putting it in the bin outside. Then she flushes the toilet, opens up the medicine cabinet, and takes out her pills.

She opens the patient portal app on her omnitool to make sure she doesn't double up. One SSRI, one NDRI, two atypical antipsychotics, one horse choker of a painkiller, two off-world drugs whose purpose is, from what she's been told, to make sure her body doesn't reject her implants, a little blue pill to help counteract some of the worst side-effects, another little blue pill to help with tremors, and a Tums to dampen the reflux the cocktail gives her every morning.

Then she lowers the toilet lid and runs a diagnostic on her arms and legs. The numbers are all green, but she still feels clumsy and stiff as she stands back up.

Pregnant.

She splashes water on her face, then follows the smell of coffee and bacon to the kitchen.

* * *

Kaidan's cooking at the stove when she walks in. 

“Morning,” he says.

“Morning.” Shepard lowers her body into one of the lounge chairs near the windows. The view of the ocean is spectacular. It’s cloudy outside, the water silver instead of blue.

“Thought I’d cook up those hot dogs before they go bad,” says Kaidan.

“Hot dogs for breakfast?” she says.

“We did buy a lot of them,” he says.

They did. When they first moved into this place, they’d invited all their friends over for a housewarming party. Then Shepard’s therapist discouraged it. Too much activity could be upsetting for her. Besides, unlike Shepard, her friends didn’t have infinite time on their hands. There was still a lot of work to do to clean up after the Reapers.

So now they had a fridge full of party food slowly marching toward its expiration date. And hot dogs for breakfast.

Shepard arranges the pillows behind her back, to no avail. She misses being able to lean back like this for longer than a few minutes. Resigned, she moves to the kitchen table and sits down, feet flat, back straight.

It’s then that she notices the datapad on the table.

She glances at Kaidan. He’s working with three different frying pans, his attention on the food. Hoping the datapad’s volume is muted, she picks it up and turns it on.

The pad chirps as it boots up. Kaidan glances back at her. 

“Did your therapist say you could look at news feeds?” he asks.

“She did." It's a lie. Her therapist would keep her in a soft cocoon forever if she could. She’s convinced Shepard’s brain will shatter if she’s reintroduced too quickly into the world outside this house. It’s one of the things Shepard hates about her, even if she’s right. The first time Shepard saw the wreckage of the Citadel on TV she’d had an episode. It's not something she remembers, but Kaidan does.

The news feed that loads on the datapad is an aggregate from across the galaxy. It’s been almost a month since she’s managed to read one. Her therapist reprogramed her omnitool to limit her extranet usage, and Kaidan guards the terminals in the house with a gentleness that makes her want to scream.

The news, unsurprisingly, is not good.

Planetary governments are struggling to stop scavengers from stealing tech off the dead Reapers. Not that any of the tech will work, but it can still be studied and possibly replicated. Images of Sovereign-class warships lying on their backs like dead beetles in London, Tokyo, and Vancouver. Drones slicing them apart with lasers. Engineers trying to figure out what to do with polymers that, as far as they can tell, are indestructible.

Poorer planets have become a dumping ground for dead Reaper parts. Bekenstein is trying to restart its economy by allowing other planets to dump Reaper tech on its surface. There are images of dirty, barefoot women and children digging through piles of husks, pulling platinum out of the bodies with pliers to sell for pennies.

Shepard wonders if Diana Allers is there. If she searches her name, will she find out Kaidan has put a block on the datapad?

She scrolls down. Palaven looks like a nightmare. Adrien Victus has declared martial law. Given that turian governance is basically martial law anyway, no one seems overly concerned.

A statement from asari councilor Irissa, who now faces charges for hoarding Prothean artifacts from the rest of the galaxy.

Article after article about the krogan population boom. Urdnot Wreav’s face glares up at her, and her stomach clenches. His petition to install Urdnot Bakara as a councilor was rejected. Now, he wants war.

The krogan have apparently already ousted the turians from Invictus. She scrolls faster. When did this happen?

Descriptions of krogan soldiers using salvaged pirate ships to invade the planet. Krogan bombs blowing up turian mining operations. Refugee ships fleeing the Minos Wasteland.

Is Grunt out there? Is he killing turians because Wreav orders him to?

A gout of steam rises off one of the frying pans. Kaidan pushes the hot dogs onto a plate, then carries them to the table. She barely notices him until he touches her shoulder.

“You’re a little pale,” he says. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she says.

He slowly pushes the datapad down. “Maybe that’s enough for today.“

“I said I’m fine,” she says. “Your eggs are burning.”

Kaidan gives a resentful glare at the datapad, then dashes back to the stove.

Shepard scrolls faster through the news.

Images of thousands of deactivated Geth on Rannoch. A reporter wandering through an eerie, abandoned Geth mainframe. Feeds of downed quarian ships with charred bodies inside.

_Tali’s out there_ , Shepard thinks, then remembers that they pulled her body from the surf and cremated her.

The planet's barren now. Shepard betrayed the quarians to give the Geth a future. And then she betrayed the Geth to give the galaxy a future.

Her eyes can’t seem to blink. Council races were now fighting over who gets to claim Rannoch. The few hundred remaining quarians from across the galaxy were demanding a settlement. Dead Geth. More dead Geth-

A child’s face stares up at her, and she gasps.

It’s his face. Telling her to choose, that she has to choose, that she’s going to die no matter what but she has to choose for everyone—

“Shepard?” Someone’s gasping for air. “Hey.”

Kaidan wraps his arms around her. He’s warm and solid and smells like hot oil. Someone is still panting, like an animal caught in a trap.

“Drink.” Kaidan puts something to her lips. It touches her tongue. Orange juice. Suddenly, she’s back in her body. And the thing making the panting sound is her.

She stares down at the datapad. The boy staring back at her is not the Catalyst. It’s some celebrity’s kid whose bunker was crushed by a dead Reaper collapsing on top of it. There’s no resemblance. It’s just a child.

“Let’s turn that off.” Kaidan clicks off the datapad and tosses it on his chair. “Give me a sec.”

He turns the rest of the burners off on the stove. Then he returns with a plate of burned eggs and bacon. There’s some grilled asparagus on the plate, too—his concession to her asking him to eat more vegetables. He sets the plates down and sits across from her, then wipes her face with his blunt thumbs. The little touches bring her back, bit by bit.

She’s Commander Shepard. She’s in the house Kaidan bought for them in California. The Reapers are dead. She destroyed the galaxy’s synthetics, and now she’s more machine than person, which might be the most ironic part of it all.

“Your therapist didn’t really sign off, did she?” he asks.

It’s non-judgmental. He’s been trying harder lately to not get angry when she doesn’t follow her treatment.

“No. But I’m not a child,” she says, which sounds childish, even to her ears.

He sighs and puts his hands in his lap. “I know you’re frustrated, but the doc said you need to take things slow. So let’s…..let’s just relax, all right? Don’t worry about the world out there.”

Shepard wants to ask how much Kaidan worries about the world "out there." She hears him, behind closed doors, speaking with Hackett, the Council, other Spectres—all the people who might trigger her. She knows they want him back on active duty. They _need_ him. But instead he’s here. With her.

“Just mustard?” he says, putting a hotdog in a bun.

“Yeah,” she says.

They eat together. Kaidan puts a pint of relish on his own dog, the flakes of pickle pouring out of the bun like sludge when he bites into it. He puts away three times as many hot dogs as she does, chatting about the weather, the osprey he saw on the balcony, an old friend he found out was still alive. He’s acting normal for her.

She loves him for it. She hates him for it, too. 

* * *

Later, she tells him she’s going down to the beach. She can tell he wants to object, but he’ll be able to see her from any room on the west side of the house.

It’s cold out, so she puts on a sweater. The sleeves look wrong on her prosthetic arms, like cloth on a scarecrow. She takes the stone steps carved in the cliffside slowly, feeling like she’s driving the Mako as she commands her limbs to do as they’re told. She has a headache by the time she reaches the sand, and her knees hurt, which is impossible, but phantom pain has never listened to logic.

She walks down to the wrack and picks up a stone in the sand. She chucks it out into the water, the stone going wide. She picks up another stone, tries to direct it where to go, and again, it doesn’t obey.

She looks back up at the house on the cliff. Kaidan bought it years ago—his “piece of property on the Golden Coast.” Its real estate value soared after the war, since this area wasn’t even touched by the Reapers. It’s miles away from Los Angeles, where the population of the refugee camps is now estimated to be in the millions.

Kaidan stands in the window, a cup of coffee in his hand. His mouth is moving, so he has to be talking to someone on his omnitool. Her therapist? Her doctor? Or is he just telling a friend how hard it is to be trapped in a house with his crazy cyborg girlfriend?

He waves at her, and she waves back.

Then, crouching, she slides her hand into her pocket, pulls out the pregnancy test, and picks up a stone in the same movement.

She chucks them both out into the water, the lighter pregnancy test sheering off and sinking under the waves some yards off from the rock.

* * *

By the time she climbs the steps back to the house, she needs another painkiller.

She heads for the bathroom. It’s a few hours too early for her second dose, but it feels like needles are stabbing into her hips and spine, and the pill goes down easy.

She finds Kaidan in the living room. He’s watching reruns of "The Great Sol System Bake Off," and she sits down beside him on the couch.

“Which season is this?” she asks.

“The one with the vorcha and the gay turian," he says. "You okay?” 

“I’m fine,” she says.

“The stairs give you trouble?” he asks.

“No,” she says.

“I can give you a lift with the shuttlecar next time if you want,” says Kaidan. “It might not be good to strain your joints while your prosthetics are still new.”

“I want to walk,” she says.

**“Some people are…..judgmental,” says the asari on the screen. “My family didn't approve of the relationship. People don’t think a vorcha can be a good dad.”**

**The camera cuts to a vorcha talking into an omnitool while he feeds a blue baby in a highchair. “Me pick you up at yoga at three, aaaaaaa.”**

“Who were you talking to earlier?” she asks.

“A buddy of mine,” he says. “He and his wife are stationed across the galaxy from each other. He just needed to vent.”

“Where’s he posted?”

“Mars,” says Kaidan.

**“What will you be making for us today, Charv?” asks the English human host.**

**“Me make three-tier cake,” says the vorcha, whisking eggs. “Vanilla buttercream, varren filling. Daughter’s favorite.”**

“Must be nice to have friends reach out to you,” says Shepard.

"Don't be like that," says Kaidan.

"Like what?" asks Shepard.

"Like....You know it's tough now," he says. 

Shepard does know it's tough. She knows better than anybody just how tough things are.

"Garrus and Liara ask about you all the time," he says. "So do the rest of the old squad. You'll be able to talk to them soon."

Soon. He's been saying that for months. Him and her therapist. They've both been screening her emails, like gorgons at a temple door, telling her occasionally that so-and-so says hello. Eventually, they stopped updating her even that much.

“Are they okay?” she asks. "Garrus and Liara?" 

“I’d tell you if they weren’t.”

“Would you?” she asks.

“Yeah, Shepard,” he says, sounding tired. “But….I know you, all right. If I tell you the kind of work they’re up to, you'd just torture yourself for not being able to help them.”

“I already torture myself,” she says. “You think I like being stuck in this glass cage with you?”

Neither of them speaks for a long time. They sit side by side, watching smoke pour out of ovens on the vid screen. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know you’re not happy.”

How can she be happy? She’s a jigsaw puzzle of broken pieces. There are parts of her brain that are like dark rooms now, too terrifying to enter. It’ll be decades before she’s even remotely close to normal. Her mind may _never_ be the same again. All she has is the reassurance from Kaidan and her therapist that one day, one day, when they decide, she'll get to go outside. She'll get to talk to her friends. She'll be okay. 

“I’m sorry, too,” she says. “I’m sorry you’re stuck here with me.”

“Hey, I choose to be here, all right?” He pulls her against him.

“Yeah,” she says, putting her head on his shoulder.

They finish the finale together. The vorcha wins. **“Me destroy you!” he screams in the gay turian’s face, while his crying asari wife and daughters clap.**

“I want you to get better,” he says. 

“I do, too,” she says.

“Just....please believe me," he says. "I'd never lie to you, Shepard."

"I know," she says. "Thank you for being honest with me." 

* * *

That night, he lays her out on their bed.

He unbuttons her blouse slowly. His hands are cold as they slide over her breasts. He smiles while he does it, like he’s lucky to be able to touch her like this.

He still manages to make her feel sexy, even though she’s a scarred piece of meat.

He shimmies her panties down and tosses them on the floor. He pulls her prosthetics against his chest the same way he used to do her legs.

"Hey," he says. 

"Hey you," she says, grinning and drowsy. 

Her cunt’s not the same as it was. It’s covered in scars from skin grafts, and she’s lost a lot of feeling down there.

But she’s still wet when he touches her. He just rests his palm there, gently sliding it up and down, until his fingers are glistening.

“Scoot up,” he tells her.

She slides further up the bed. He shucks off his t-shirt and jeans, then crawls up the bed and settles between her legs. His cock rests between the spread lips of her labia, separated only by the thin fabric of his briefs.

He kisses her throat, his mouth tracing a lazy path up to her ear. 

“You uh, want it like this?” he asks.

Shepard used to love to be fucked missionary, but it hurts her back now, and her acid reflux means she can’t stay like this for long without her chest starting to burn.

“Roll over,” she says.

He rolls onto his back. She skins off his briefs, his cock popping out, flushed red.

She used to be a pro at sucking him off, but the reconstruction of her face means that her jaw doesn’t always cooperate. The muscles weaken faster, sometimes even get locked. But they’ve been together for years, and she can’t imagine ever not doing this for him, if only to hear the sounds he makes.

She parts her lips slowly around the head of his cock. She fits her mouth into a perfect O, pressing the flat of her tongue against the slit. He whines.

She takes him in as deep as she can. She loves the smell of him, that musky, masculine scent. His pubic hair is shiny with sweat, and she loves that, too, because he’s worked it up for her. He’s hard for _her_ , with her prosthetics, and her implants, and her scarred, misshapen face.

“God, Shepard….” His fingers slide through her hair. She swallows around him, and he moans. His balls are heavy, and she lifts off his cock, nuzzling them with her lips.

It occurs to her, clinically, that the reason why she’s pregnant is right here. It seems insane that these squishy, little sacs of flesh can do something as unthinkable as put life inside her. It hasn't sunk in yet, not really, and depending how the conversation goes, it might not ever.

But the fact that he’s knocked her up makes her, weirdly, even hotter for him.

“I want you to fuck me,” she says.

He grins boyishly and rocks up. She gets on her hands and knees, her breasts heavy between the unbuttoned panels of her shirt. He shimmies up behind her, then runs his hands up her back. His thumbs press hard into her tight spots, digging out tension. Then he runs them under, giving her breasts a squeeze, twisting her nipples in a way that makes her hum. Then his hands roam back to her ass, and he squeezes her cheeks between his hands.

His cock bobs between them, eager, hard. She glances back at him, and his eyes are sleepy and content.

“I love you," she says. 

"I love you, too," he says. 

Taking his cock in hand, he presses the head between the folds of her vulva. She feels her muscles resist, burn, then accept the intrusion. That final glide takes her breath away the same as it did the first time, all those years ago before Ilos. 

She can feel him, deep inside, in a way that makes her feel primal. She loves being his woman, being fucked by him, being utterly taken this way. She loves it even more when he first thrusts and her breasts bounce under her, followed by the wet sound of their lovemaking. He grabs her hips and builds his rhythm. It doesn’t take long for each stroke of his cock to make her sloppy. Each slide out pulls a mewl from her, and each thrust in a grunt. 

“Shepard,” he groans.

He’s found an angle that’s driving her insane. The way his strong hands hold her in place so he can fuck her the way he likes. She can feel it building, and building, until she’s almost crying.

When she comes, it’s like stars behind her eyes. Her fingers uncurl in the sheets. “God _damn_.”

He slaps her ass. “Thanks, ma’am.”

She whimpers as he keeps thrusting. She’s so sensitive that each withdraw of his cock sends tiny orgasms up and down her muscles, her cunt so wet that the sounds are obscene.

“I’m gonna come again,” she whines.

“It’s alright, baby, go ahead.”

She comes with a pathetic, babyish sound this time. She’s just a cunt now, there for him to fuck, and she wouldn't want it any other way. He keeps thrusting, speeding a little as she squeezes him, then evens out, returning to his pace.

“Kaidan, please.” Her joints can’t stay in this position long. Her shoulders are on fire, with little knots of pain exploding where they meet her prosthetics.

“Almost there." He fucks her deep and hard, until each thrust drives a cry out of her, and it must do something for him, because he hauls her ass flush against him and groans, pushing deep inside her, flooding her sore cunt with come.

He slides out of her with a deeply unsexy _glorp_.

They both laugh. He gets some baby wipes from the bathroom and they both clean up. After she takes a piss, they lay in bed, not touching, the room too warm and sweaty for cuddling.

“Take all your meds?” he asks her.

“Yes, dad,” she says. “Got your mouth guard?”

He pauses, then goes to the bathroom and pops it in his mouth. He clicks off the lights and climbs back in bed, and it’s not long before she can hear him grinding his teeth uselessly on the foam mouth guard in the dark.

She lays on her side with her therapeutic pillow under her ribs, thinking about the sperm swimming around her cervix.

She thinks also about the fertilized egg that’s already attached to the lining of her uterus, where it’s taken up residence without permission.

She wonders what he'll do with the information she’s about to give him. It’s possible that all the tiny freedoms she’s won over the last few months will be ripped away from her for her own good.

But this is Kaidan. And she doesn’t think he’ll do that to her.

“Hey,” she says.

He grunts.

“I’m pregnant.”

There’s a long, long silence.

“How do you know?” he asks.

“I took a test,” she says.

She can almost anticipate his questions. How did she get a test without him noticing, is she sure, is she absolutely sure?

“When did you find out?” he asks.

“This morning,” she says.

The lamp clicks on. He’s not…..angry. His face is neutral. He takes the mouth guard out and puts it on a tissue on the bedside table.

“Okay,” he says. 

They sit in silence. Despite all they've been through, this has always been a conversation wrapped in barbed wire. There was an understanding early on that she didn’t want kids, and that he wanted whatever she wanted. She sensed that answer was not entirely honest, but had always been too afraid to dig deeper. After all, if he really did want kids, wouldn’t that mean the end to the relationship? Wouldn’t she be selfish to keep him? 

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Mostly that between all the surgery, implants, and medication, something must have thrown off my hormone blockers.”

“Yeah.” He runs a hand through his hair. “What do you want to do?”

She’s not sure. The idea of a baby is so abstract. It’s not something that's ever been in the cards for her. She's a marine, a spacefaring adventurer. Her place is in the stars with the Normandy, not picking up kids from daycare.

But maybe this is her future now. For all she knows, the Alliance will never let her near a frigate again. Maybe this is the way things are supposed to go. They'll settle down, have a family. Live a domesticated life in this glass house cut off from the rest of the world. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “Do you….want kids?

A strange expression crosses Kaidan’s face, like he’s remembered too late to put a mask on. “It’s not a priority, Shepard. I’d be fine either way.”

“A firm answer,” she says.

He doesn’t laugh.

“Look, I don’t want to pressure you in either direction. It’s your choice, and I’ll support whatever you do, but…..do you really think you’re in the best shape to have a baby?” he asks. 

She’s torn between being amused by his chivalry and stung by his honesty. He's right. She’s a psychological wreck. Having a child won’t make that better. It could make it much, much worse. Her own mother had abandoned her not long after she was born, all because having a baby pulled her into a dark depression with no way out. Would that happen to her?

She thinks about gaining weight. Stretch marks. Health complications with meds, implants. Shoving a watermelon out of her vagina. None of it sounds pleasant.

But there is a part of her, asleep until this moment, that likes the thought of having his baby. She’s not sure if she’s supposed to want something like this, or if choosing it means giving up something else.

It’s not a decision that can be taken back. 

A lot of things, she reflects, can never be taken back. 

"I don't think I can make this choice with the way things are now," she says.

"Okay." He pauses, and when she doesn't say anything, adds, "What do you want me to do?"

She thinks of the dead Geth, and Tali, and Wreav and his trail of blood. She remembers the concussion of her pistol as it shattered the glass on the Citadel, while the Catalyst faded behind her. Red light, then pain, then the world ripped off its axis. A life of regret that now stretches before her like a road without a horizon.

"I want you to back me up when I tell the therapist she doesn't get to block my emails anymore," she said. "And that I want to talk to my friends."

"Shepard-"

"Don't," she says. "I know you want to help me. But _this_ isn't helping. I can't live this way. I'll keep doing the therapy, I'll do whatever exercises she wants. But I need to see what's out there. I can't keep hiding in here. I need to be part of the world again, even if it's painful."

He looks away. She can tell he wants to argue. He's taken orders from her for years, but this one is the hardest.

"All right," he says. "I'll do that."

She relaxes. "Thank you."

He pulls her head close and kisses her. There's something shaky in it, like he's afraid, but neither of them mentions it. He clicks off the light, and they lay back down.

"Garrus and Liara will be glad to hear from you," he says. "All of them will."

It's a half-truth. Some of them will never want anything to do with her again. Joker didn’t visit her in the hospital, not after she told the Alliance what she'd done. "I miss them." 

He pulls her into his arms. The two of them move pillows between her limbs and his skin, to prevent bruising. He falls asleep with his fingertips on her stomach, breathing deep, dreamless breaths.

She thinks of her mistakes. The horrible world beyond this little house.

She thinks too about how tomorrow she’ll talk to her friends, and for the first time in months, feels hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for Skoolmunkee on tumblr for "Vorcha Dad" :P 
> 
> https://skoolmunkee.tumblr.com/tagged/vorcha


End file.
